


Un-birthday

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 03:42:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5852662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"he doesn't believe it's really the birthday until morning i was looking at him avoid twitter from midnight haha" - <a href="https://twitter.com/danisnotonfire/status/561128087736553472">@danisnotonfire</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Un-birthday

It must be past midnight by now. 

Dan doesn't know, because his laptop and phone are in the bedroom and he can't see a clock from the position they're laying in. Phil's not-birthday rules; it's not his birthday until he wakes up to a new sun on the thirtieth. Too many years of Dan not respecting the sanctity of this rule and somehow this technology lockdown became their tradition. 

From sundown on the twenty-ninth through when they go to bed, technology gets put away. They cook together, the kind of elaborate meal they wouldn't usually make time for. When the food is done they sit at the table with candles lit and a bottle of wine to split between them. 

It's a date night of sorts, but more than that, just - a night for them. It's not a birthday thing. Phil won't even allow a mention of presents. They don't dress up. They don't go out. There is no cake. It's just a night to be together and talk, sometimes about serious things and sometimes about nothing at all. It's a night where no one checks twitter or tumblr or answers emails, where no phone calls are taken or made. 

Dan looks forward to the twenty-ninth every year with ridiculous enthusiasm. He loves the way the hours seem to stretch out and fly by at the same time. They ended up on the couch, sprawled out against each other. Their bodies take the length of it and most of the width despite being pressed all up together. 

Phil's asleep now, drifted off some time between a kiss and a smile. It should probably be embarrassing, the way Dan's been staring at him for the past twenty minutes, but... he can't quite seem to find it in himself to care. He's fascinated, in a strange contemplative mood. Things move so fast and sometimes his mind moves even faster, thoughts flitting between obsessions and insecurities and exhilaration, but right now everything feels syrupy slow and there's no room for anything in his mind but this - but Phil. Phil, whose face is so familiar and so strange and Dan's favorite thing, for years and years now. He's hopelessly in love with the irregular shape of Phil's nose and the way he looks with stubble on his cheeks and the lines only faintly beginning to show around his eyes and the lines of his smile. 

There's just nothing about Phil he doesn't want to hold precious in this moment. His heart pounds with it, just like it used to do before what they have stopped being something he was afraid to lose and became the thing that kept him from losing himself. He loves Phil, loves him loves him _loves_ him, and he loves the way that Phil has changed and grown and all the ways he's still the boy Dan met as a teenager. 

He loves that right now he looks at Phil and sees so much more than what's on the surface, too. He looks at Phil sleeping, mouth open and bottom lip damp and pink, bathed in moon and city light through the window. He sees the face of the man he wants to grow old with. He sees his business partner and his best friend and the guy who steals the covers at night and gets cross with Dan when he's procrastinating too much. He sees the person he walks through life with. He sees the other person his kids will call Dad one day. He's the most familiar thing to Dan in his whole life and yet somehow still seems brand new in some ways, still today. 

If Phil were to open his eyes right now, the words would scatter back to all the corners of his brain that they stay hidden in. He's never entirely sure if he makes it clear enough to Phil that he's in this for forever, and he was so scared for years that he'd drive Phil away with his sharp impatient tongue and his incessant focus on the negative. He never wants to know how close he might have come, in their worse moments. But now he thinks, he thinks he gets it - that one of the reasons they work is Phil's ability to look deeper into Dan and see everything that terrifies Dan to say. It doesn't mean Phil always likes it - or likes him, probably, Dan can be honest enough to admit - but it's the foundation for a love that Dan thought only existed in storybooks. Not perfect, not without effort and care required, but strong and real enough to last. 

He reaches out with the tip of a finger and draws it along Phil's jaw. When Phil's eyes blink open instead of heartfelt pledges or poetic waxing, what comes out of Dan's mouth is, "My arm's asleep." 

Phil laughs, that husky quiet one that's just for Dan mostly. His mouth opens on a yawn that he buries against Dan's shoulder, re-situating them so he's practically laying on top of Dan, using Dan's chest as a pillow. "I'm tired." 

"You're getting old." Dan smiles and runs his fingers through Phil's hair. He can see the roots just coming up lighter, a weird effect in the low light that he'd miss entirely if not for how close they are. 

Phil makes a sleepy noise, and pokes Dan in the side. "Not allowed." 

"Yes, sir." Dan thinks about adding a joke about respecting his elders but decides he wants to preserve the ambiance. "You want to go to bed?" 

"Not yet," Phil says. He rubs his cheek up and down a little, like a cat scenting. Dan almost makes that joke too, but again, ambiance. 

And anyway, it's cute, and if he points it out Phil might stop doing it. He's fucking precious like this, all sleepy and pliant. Dan rubs a hand up and down his back, slipping under the t-shirt he's wearing to touch bare skin. Dan works his fingers over the bumps of his spine and presses in firmer against his shoulder blades where the tension gathers. 

Phil really is a fiend for the cuddles, and they don't do this nearly as often as they should. Even long, lazy mornings in bed are usually either spent having sex or shoulder to shoulder with their laptops on and emails up in impromptu business meeting sessions, rarely an in-between. It's ridiculous to lament that they don't get enough moments together when they really spend all of their moments together, but their lives have felt too nonstop to even breathe right at some points in the past year, too pressured with too many deadlines, and it's only in the past couple of weeks have they come back together with an agreement to put more effort into them again - the Dan and Phil removed from the careers, from the cameras. Dan and Phil, the couple. 

Phil lets out a long, heavy sigh of pleasure at being petted the way Dan's still doing. His weight against Dan is heavy but reassuring and despite the fact that Phil's elbow is probably bruising his spleen and he has an itch on his calf he'd have to disturb Phil to scratch. 

"Love you," Dan says suddenly, his voice filling the room in a way that seems too loud and blunt. He can't pack everything he's thinking and feeling into those seven letters, but he hopes some of it carries through. 

"Yeah," Phil agrees, smiling a little with his eyes still closed. "Love you, too." 

In the morning they'll wake up and Phil's birthday extravaganza will truly begin. They'll have fun, by themselves and with friends. They'll celebrate and it'll be fantastic from start to finish if Dan has any say in the matter. But he'll draw this right now out for a little bit longer because he's not quite done with it yet. 

And maybe, Dan thinks as he watches Phil drift back to some place between sleeping and waking, he won't wait another year to have a night like this.


End file.
